Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

Archive for September 15th, 2004

Jose Huerta whose page you can find here (He has some interesting statistics about education and poverty in Venezuela in his page)has been looking at a comparison of the data from 4565 centers from the results of the 2000 Presidential vote and the recent recall referendum vote, as well as between the 1999 referendum and the 2000 Presidential vote. Essentially, you note that as usual time was working against Chavez as with each vote the anti-Chavez vote went up and the pro-Chavez vote went down. (Here is the full presentation and details in Power Point format). However, this trend stopped between 2000 and 2004, despite the fact that the time span between the two was much longer.

What is interesting about his results, is that he finds that if you look at the number of anti-Chavez votes at the municipal level, there is a high correlation between the 1999 and 2000 vote with R^2=0.9784:

But what is remarkable is that the correlation actually went UP between 2000 and 2004, with R^2 of 0.9866 at the municipal level:

which is somewhat counterintuitive given the time frame and everything that happened in Venezuela in those four years, including the new voters, changes in voting centers, migrations and political unrest.

Jose Huerta whose page you can find here (He has some interesting statistics about education and poverty in Venezuela in his page)has been looking at a comparison of the data from 4565 centers from the results of the 2000 Presidential vote and the recent recall referendum vote, as well as between the 1999 referendum and the 2000 Presidential vote. Essentially, you note that as usual time was working against Chavez as with each vote the anti-Chavez vote went up and the pro-Chavez vote went down. (Here is the full presentation and details in Power Point format). However, this trend stopped between 2000 and 2004, despite the fact that the time span between the two was much longer.

What is interesting about his results, is that he finds that if you look at the number of anti-Chavez votes at the municipal level, there is a high correlation between the 1999 and 2000 vote with R^2=0.9784:

But what is remarkable is that the correlation actually went UP between 2000 and 2004, with R^2 of 0.9866 at the municipal level:

which is somewhat counterintuitive given the time frame and everything that happened in Venezuela in those four years, including the new voters, changes in voting centers, migrations and political unrest.

Jose Huerta whose page you can find here (He has some interesting statistics about education and poverty in Venezuela in his page)has been looking at a comparison of the data from 4565 centers from the results of the 2000 Presidential vote and the recent recall referendum vote, as well as between the 1999 referendum and the 2000 Presidential vote. Essentially, you note that as usual time was working against Chavez as with each vote the anti-Chavez vote went up and the pro-Chavez vote went down. (Here is the full presentation and details in Power Point format). However, this trend stopped between 2000 and 2004, despite the fact that the time span between the two was much longer.

What is interesting about his results, is that he finds that if you look at the number of anti-Chavez votes at the municipal level, there is a high correlation between the 1999 and 2000 vote with R^2=0.9784:

But what is remarkable is that the correlation actually went UP between 2000 and 2004, with R^2 of 0.9866 at the municipal level:

which is somewhat counterintuitive given the time frame and everything that happened in Venezuela in those four years, including the new voters, changes in voting centers, migrations and political unrest.

Good article by Andrew Morse in Tech Central Station comparing the fake Rather documents and the rush to judgment by CBS to Carter’s rush to judgement in the Venezuelan recall. I love this sentence:

“The deficiencies exhibited by CBS and the Carter Center are problematic not only for big media and elite NGOs. Left unaddressed, they are problems that will eventually feed back into the blogosphere. The rise of the blogosphere has been predicated on the existence of a reliable, common base of information that people can discuss — a base of information that full-timers are still in the best position to provide. The blogosphere is most robust when it can draw upon the resources of media organizations with global reach that honestly vet sources and conduct comprehensive follow-up reporting. It depends on the boots on the ground that a Carter Center can provide to monitor elections in faraway lands. Without the work of an organization like the Carter Center, there might not be detailed election data from Venezuela to examine in the first place. “

For those that don’t know about the Dan Rather affair, you can read all about it at Instapundit, but basically somebody gave CBS fake documents that questioned President Bush’ National Guard service and the type of treatment he received while there. These documents were quickly debunked and found to be fake by bloggers in less than 24 hours. The giveaway? Easy, the documents were supposed to be from before the era of PC’s but were printed using one, which one could tell by the quality of the spacing and font!. More here too.